Hurt
by Gypsy Love
Summary: Kind of bizarre Ellie internal dialogue about Craig breaking her heart when he told her he loved her and not to tell Joey about the cocaine. Sort of a jagged version of Ellie.


No one had ever hurt me like that. Not like he did that day. It was breathtaking hurt. It was the light is too bright and hurts my eyes hurt. It was I can't breathe around the pain hurt.

Sure, my mom. My mom hurt me plenty. Drinking, getting drunk, dropping the ball. Setting the house on fire. Insulting me. Bitch. Selfish little cunt. Those words came out of my mother's mouth directed at me. That was hurtful. But she was my mother and there was some forgiveness built in there. She was a drunk. She had a problem. He had no excuse.

I suppose it was partly my fault, for being stupid. For ignoring certain signs and symptoms. I knew how addicts were and what they did. My mother was an addict. I had addictions. I could have opened my eyes and seen…something. But I refused to see. Like the Korn song, I refused to see that I was going blind. Or did I get it backwards? But I was groping in the dark and got stung.

I just loved him for so long and so much. It was deep, it was unrequited, it was deliciously painful. I saw just enough of him for just long enough that it drove me out of my mind. Frustrated desire is so maddening, like some rash that is on the knife edge of itch and pain.

That summer we spend together, that summer. Was it last summer? No, no. Two summers ago now. Funny how no time seems to have passed. The summer before grade 12, when we still thought Ashley was coming back, when we still thought we were good friends. I was with him every day, seeing him, hearing his voice, all the variations. The high pitched joking tone. The soft school boy apologetic tone. Texture. Textures like sandpaper, like socks on hard wood floors, like whispers in hallways. The husky voice that drove me crazy, that made me squirm. I paid such close attention that summer and I didn't even know why, refusing to believe that I was falling in love with such an unobtainable boy.

Craig Manning. Even his name sends chills through the tiny bones in my body. Even just hearing his name makes my hair stand on end, makes my skin crawl. Every sense and cell is alive at the mere mention of him.

I paid such close attention that summer, to everything. To the color of his eyes and the curl of each hair, to the way his fingers found the notes on the guitar. I watched the way he walked and how he sat and noticed the things I said that made him laugh. I wouldn't realize that I loved him, that maybe it was more than love. Less somehow, just some sick obsession that made me feel drugged out and high and crashed all at the same time.

I thought I had put paid to it, that I had swallowed all my love and affection for him whole, like some pale yellow snake with a rat, the shape visible beneath the skin without bones. He had chosen Manny. Little Miss Manny. I had no choice but to accept that, to move on, crippled and dented and bent but moving on. Letting go. I thought I was being mature. We were friends. I still played in the band. I drummed behind him as he sang, and it was fine with me that he took the spotlight.

I thought I had moved on and let him go, and I had pushed him to do the music thing alone. I had pushed him because it was where he wanted to go, and he wanted to drag us with him as a crutch. It was out of fear and loyalty and some twisted version of something that was just in his head. We couldn't go with him, me and Jimmy and Marco. We were this time and place and he had other times and places to go to, and I recognized this. I saw it clear. It wasn't like the Korn song at all. It was like that other song, seeing clearly when the rain had gone. Seeing for miles and miles. I was aware of the letting go. I was aware of the love that was assaulted by my digestive juices.

But he came back. He came back a drug addict rock star and I loved him still. I had lied to myself all along, and didn't I see the tragic again? Didn't I see the dark shadows under his eyes and the weight loss and the hollow cheek bones and the jittery drugged out fabulousness of it all? He was so irresistible when he was going under. And couldn't I close my eyes and imagine the scene in the cemetery in grade nine when he had run away from his dad beating him? How that brokenness may have rivaled this. So that was a part of what I had always loved about him, this stretched thin about to break aspect. And the love came back, and it was whole. I had not swallowed it at all, had not dissolved it, had not done anything to it. It was there. Pristine and shining and glitteringly beautiful as it had always been but first, of course, I had to save him.

The little packet of cocaine in my hand and the threat to call Joey on my lips and his almost whining at me, "leave me alone, why would you do that to me?" whining kind of begging and didn't I just for a moment like the power of that? Didn't I like the feeling that I could crush him like he crushed me?

But the sightless, unreasoning, demon love snuffed out that perverse sadistic power girl and I told him he knew why I would do it, and that he shouldn't make me say it. So he said the words I'd waited to hear, the promise delivered at last and it was all the sweeter for the waiting.

"I love you, Ellie," he said, and the whining and begging was gone and it was just him. Just Craig who I had fallen in love with in that summer of heat and longing and bruised pride and shattered little egos. The words were like water, cool and smooth and perfect and in that instant I was happy. I believed with the dumb faith of a child that it was true, that the world rendered for me was the true one and not a thin overlay on all the grotesque variations of existence. In that moment I was a child again.

"I love you, too," I said, and I couldn't stop the smile. I couldn't stop the tiny giggle. Finally, I was home. And the kiss was exactly what I wanted, for the first time in my life I got what I wanted. For the first time in my life I felt complete. Whole. I didn't feel like there was some gaping hole in my psyche.

Then he shattered it. He shattered it all. Words cannot say. The light dimmed all in that instant, and the world has been so much darker since.


End file.
